I bid you welcome gentle readers, and as always a hearty
Hi y’all to our assigned reader of all things NASCAR on this fine day. Road
courses are now one down and one to go for the Cup series. Best races of the
year… in my not-so-humble estimation. Near the end of the Sonoma race, Kevin
Harvick put quite a convincing stomping on the rest of the field. Next in line
to the checkers was SHR teammate Clint Bowyer. A third SHR driver, Kurt Busch
finished 7th. Three out of four isn’t bad, and we’ll just say that
Danica Patrick had a rough afternoon, but not as rough as Ricky Stenhouse.
There were only 5 cautions, and two of those were planned. Two more involved
Danica and the fifth was for debris from the meeting with Stenhouse. After
that, it ran clean and green the final 56 laps. I love it when that happens!

One thing I did notice. The hot tickets, those
fresh-faced young racers we’ve all come to love this year, found out that road
racing is harder than it looks. One has to look all the way down the pylon to 8th
and 9th place, Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney respectively. All
others were far back. This old gal just can’t wait to get to the Glen, which
still has left and right turns, but done at far greater speed than Sonoma. The
two are nothing alike, as the kids will learn for themselves a bit later in the
summer.

Meanwhile, over in Iowa, the Trucks and Xfinity series
ran stand-alone races on Friday and Saturday and each started a full field of
32 and 40 trucks/cars. No, not all of the entries were necessarily “real” but
they did start a full complement of drivers both nights. John Hunter Nemechek
took the checkers for a second consecutive race in the trucks, and on Saturday,
William Byron proved that last week wasn’t a fluke and he really could win
without Denny Hamlin there to rudely slam him out of the way… while driving a
car that proved to be illegal in post-race inspection.

I know it won’t do any good to point this out, but NASCAR…
when these series do stand-alone races, without those Cup drivers we’re told
make the races more interesting and attract bigger crowds, they get bigger
crowds and the races are intensely more interesting… because they’re real!
Please, consider scheduling more of these races away from Cup. This was the
cleanest and best weekend of racing of the year. The only thing that could have
made it better would have been that it was on NBCSN, not FS1.

OK, I can’t go to Daytona without at least making mention
of the elephant in the living room. Just when you thought it was safe to go
back in the water, FOX dropped the bomb while signing off… Eldora, top race of
the year in the minds of many… will broadcast on FOX BUSINESS NETWORK!

Nope, it’s no joke; it’s as real as the ingredients in
mayonnaise. There’s even more, as I’m now told they start out on FS1 in the
afternoon, then move for a bit to FS2, and finally land on FBN for final
qualifying and the race itself. Make sure your remote has a good battery. It’s
gonna get a workout!

Of course, this has brought about conversations on every
existing racing board and many and varied articles have been or are being
written about it. One such appears on Race Fans
Forever, as I
type. Please, check it out and make our new writer feel welcome. Amid the
conversations in the comments below the article, another of our writers seemed
to lay the blame directly on the sanctioning body for “allowing” such a thing
to transpire and I did my best to explain the lay of the land to him as it is
today.

These TV Networks
are paying NASCAR the combined sum of $8.2 BILLION for the dubious privilege of
broadcasting NASCAR races. With a price tag that high, NASCAR is no longer
calling the shots. They can't. The networks paid for that privilege, so while
fans and journalists are going on and on, ranting about injustice and
stupidity, the networks are gleaning exactly what they hoped for. They are
gaining a huge boost for a pair of fledgling sports networks… well, 3 if you
count FS1 and FS2 apart.

That is why they
bought into the contracts… to promote their almost nonexistent sports networks…
and it's working. Brian and the NASCAR brain trust didn't
figure this out in time… or didn't care. I can't speak for NASCAR, except for
name calling on occasion. The networks are getting more air for those new
stations than they could anywhere else… and they have it exclusively over a
10-year period, which ends with the 2024 season.

Now, coverage for
the top 2 series goes to NBC for the rest of the year. FOX still has the
trucks… why, I don't know, but they do. The biggest seller on the truck
schedule is Eldora, bar none. I'm sure no one will argue that. They've gotten
all they're going to get this year from the other two, and they have this fairly
unwatched channel sitting in solitude called Fox Business Network. For them, it
makes perfect business sense to move this money-maker to that channel and give
it a free boost. Well, free except for their part of that $8.2 Billion.

As for the fans, we have every right in the world to be
mad about one of our best races being summarily consigned to a channel a lot of
folks can’t get, and a lot more already have, but don’t know it. This scribe
just wants to make sure we’re all mad at the guilty party. That party is FOX
Sports, not NASCAR. Despite the fall in ratings, the fledgling channels, FS1
and NBCSN have experienced exponential growth they wouldn’t have achieved
without NASCAR.

From Jayski.com Tuesday afternoon:

FS1 on Sunday
afternoon drew a 1.9 overnight for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race
from Sonoma Raceway, down 14% from a 2.2 last year. The 1.9 also is down 21%
from FS1's 2.4 overnight in 2015. There were 3.240 million viewers.

Not a rosy picture, to be sure, but week in and week
out, the races still seem to best almost all other sporting events on their
given weekend. (That does not include selected NFL games. That remains the
highest rated sport there is.) The only loser I see in that scenario is NASCAR.
They might be trying, but going about it in a way that displeases a large
percentage of what’s left of their fan base.

One more time, I have to return to the mantra that’s
been repeated here until even I’m getting tired of hearing it. Almost all of
the problems… low ratings, low attendance, fan unrest and just plain
disinterest could be cured if NASCAR would just fix the CARS!

Go to YouTube and find any race you choose from the
1960s, 1970s or 1980s. What do you see under those cars? AIR! No splitters, no
track scraping side skirts. The saying used to be that you could run a
medium-sized dog under there without harm. Air under the car will do away with
aero-push in a heartbeat. Raise ‘em up 5 inches all the way around and passing
ability goes up exponentially! The dirty little secret is, NASCAR wants them
hugging the ground. Someone over there has the mistaken idea that we are
F1-Lite. We are not. We are… or were… a knock-down, drag-out, brawling contact
sport. That’s how we started and that’s what the fans loved. Now it’s gone, and
so, for the most part, are the fans. Still, does Brian France listen? Does he
even care? No, in both cases.

This aged scribe is about ready to give up. It’s one
thing to see the problems, but to see the sport dying because someone simply
refuses to fix the obvious… that’s painful.

Time now for our Classic Country Closeout, before my
blood pressure reaches untold and unhealthy levels. Nothing more soothing that
looking at Carl Smith. Gals, am I alone in thinking that man has the sexiest
eyes ever?

Please friends, take a moment to say a prayer for
comfort for the wife and children of my brother Mike, who left this earthly
plane on June 24, 2017.

Be well gentle readers, and remember to keep smiling.
It looks so good on you!

The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Race Fans Forever are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of Race Fans Forever. Race Fans Forever is not affiliated with NASCAR or any other motorsports sanctioning body in any form..